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Monday, October 27, 2014

A Boston Globearticle
outlining findings of a new study report on human trafficking cites "passive" law enforcement approaches and victims'
fears of deportation as reasons why more victims are not reported and rescued.

Healthcare professionals also play a key role in responding to
victims. A recent study
by experts Dr. Laura Lederer and Christopher Wetzel revealed that nearly nine
out of ten human trafficking victims had contact with a health professional
while trafficked. Yet these opportunities for rescue went unrealized, since
many health professionals remain unaware of the problem and comparatively few
have received training on how to
recognize and respond to victims.

Federal and state laws and grants that promote awareness, fund
research, identify best practices, provide training, increase social services
and require reporting of suspected victims (who often will not self-report, out
of fear) can help turn this around. More resources will strengthen the social
services safety net and the response of law enforcement. Meanwhile, reporting
victims to the care of even the existing imperfect system is far better than
the alternative of non-reporting that returns victims to their abusers to
suffer disease, violence and even death.

Monday, October 13, 2014

The Seattle Timesopines that the US Supreme Court needs to
overturn unilaterally the votes of millions of citizens in states that uphold
marriage as between a man and a woman.

Why not let the people of each state decide? The editors offer no
legal or logical arguments--only advocacy buzzwords like "marriage
equality," "discrimination" and "chosen love over outdated
notions of marriage."

Is age "inequality" inherent in the Constitutional
requirement that only individuals 35 or older may serve as president, or the
fact that no state allows children to vote?

Are public school policies "discriminatory" that
segregate by gender male and female locker rooms?

Doesn't "choosing love over outdated notions of marriage"
require legalizing marriages of five people who love each other, or of a man
and his beloved poodle, or of loving cousins or any other imaginable combination
based merely on a subjective emotional bond?

Absent an objective, biologically based definition of marriage as
between a man and a woman, a union uniquely designed to provide a
gender-balanced home for children, marriage soon means nothing at all.

Wednesday, October 8, 2014

The 15,000-member Christian Medical Association has published a statement on same-sex marriage, including recommendations for public policy. Some excerpts:

"Marriage is a consensual, exclusive and lifelong commitment between one man and one woman, expressed in a physical union uniquely designed to produce and nurture children."

The "abject subjectivity" of revisionist notions of marriage "offers no rational parameters that would exclude further redefinitions of 'marriage' as between multiple partners or related persons."

Government maintains a valid and vital interest in sanctioning conjugal marriage, given demonstrated benefits to children raised by both a mother and a father, economic factors favoring father-mother families and the high cost to government and society when marriage breaks down.

CMA supports legislative measures that "Recognize marriage as exclusively between one man and one woman" and also "Maintain equal protection of applicable laws for those who engage in homosexual activity without according special status or privileges based on that activity."

The full statement includes footnoted references and further resources for anyone interested in presenting an apologetic for conjugal marriage.

The Netherlands now reports that three percent of its citizens
die at the hands of doctors, including many not suffering from terminal
diseases. Dutch government officials boast of strict controls, imagining that they
somehow can manage medical killing like Dutch dikes manage encroaching waters.

But real-life statistics obtained behind the cloak of government propaganda
reveal that the program clearly has careened out of control.

In the early 1990's, statistics
in the government-sponsored Dutch Remmelink report
revealed that normalizing medical killing and putting doctors above the law had
translated into doctors killing thousands of patients who never consented to be
killed.

Colleague Peter Saunders, CEO of the Christian Medical Fellowship
in England, details
the just-released 2013 statistics that reveal how medical killing since then has
mushroomed to the point where euthanasia now accounts for three percent of all
Dutch deaths.

For a comparison of the magnitude of this percentage, consider
that the World Health Organization reports that HIV/AIDS
accounts for nearly three percent of the world's deaths annually.

Euthanasia is to the Netherlands what HIV/AIDS is to the world.

It's easy to imagine how well-educated and highly respected doctors,
daily entrusted with life and death decisions, can come to think that they know
better than the unwilling patients they euthanize. But what about the individuals
who clearly choose euthanasia?

·Some choose euthanasia because they are afraid to die, especially if a disease
means they will die in a physical condition they consider undignified. While
understandable, this view neglects that our character--not
the condition of our bodies--determines true dignity. Physical beauty and
health do not dignify a person; character, courage and love dignify a person.

·Others choose euthanasia because they feel a duty to die. They don't want to feel
like a burden to family members. Sometimes they simply do not realize that
their loved ones would never see them as a burden and would consider it a
privilege to minister to their needs. Too often, however, aged patients correctly
discern that family members would not want to take the time or bear the
inconvenience of caring for them. This perceived pressure to die poses a strong
reason not to legalize medical killing--either assisted suicide or euthanasia.

·Still others choose euthanasia because they fear pain and don't realize how medical
advances in pain control could ease their pain. Hospice also provides what many
patients and their families have found to be a comforting and satisfying way to
cope with end-of-life issues.

As we advocate in the public square for policies that promote true
compassion and palliative care rather than medical killing, we do well to also
address the deeply personal and spiritual motivations behind the drive for
assisted suicide and euthanasia. Reassure your elderly family members often of
your love for them and your commitment to their care. Share how God can make
life meaningful, even at the end of life. Hold a hand, change a bedpan, read
Scripture and pray with those facing the end of their lives on earth.

"Fight the good fight
of faith; take hold of the eternal life to which you were called, and you made
the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. I charge you in the
presence of God, who gives life to all things…" --I Timothy 6:12-13.

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Patt Morrison of the Los Angeles Times suggests in a commentary that "conservatives argue
consistently that matters of family morality aren’t for the government to
intrude on."On the contrary, conservatives and liberals alike in our
democratic republic advance many laws that deal with morality: capital
punishment, abortion, gun control and religious freedom, which applies to the
case of the castigated government official who simply seeks a government
health insurance option consistent with his conscience.

The bipartisan federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act provides
that the government must not abridge our First Amendment religious freedoms
apart from a compelling interest that the government enforces by the least
restrictive means. The wise law does not make religious interests automatically
trump government interests; it simply protects the delicate church-state
balance reflected in the Bill of Rights: "Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise
thereof…."